Trying to Install Shibby Tomato on AC56U

I tried installing shibby tomato (tomato-RT-AC56U-ARM--120-AIO-64K.trx) on my AC56U using this guide

After putting the router into recovery mode (by using the buttons at start-up) and uploading the .trx with the ASUS Firmware Restoration utility, the installation began fine, judging by the lights. After some minutes though it got stuck with just the power light still shining. When I then reset the router, no lights other than the power light would light up and I couldn't put it into recovery mode either.

I bought a serial cable and got into the CFE prompt using putty as instructed by an internet tutorial, but issuing "nvram erase" and "nvram commit" didn't change much. I still can't get the router into recovery mode using the buttons.

I have serial access to the CFE, and I can also get into some sort of linux environment running on the router by pressing enter in putty after I let the router load up for some minutes.

Should I perhaps try using the firmware update command available in the CFE and try to install the same .trx again through aftp or something?

I have no experience with routers, so I could use some advice before I try anything just to avoid bricking the router even further.

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I bought a serial cable and got into the CFE prompt using putty as instructed by an internet tutorial, but issuing "nvram erease" and "commit" didn't change much. I still can't get the router into recovery mode using the buttons.
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Click to expand...

If "erease" is not a typo, this might be part of the problem. Also, I think that you should type "nvram commit", not only "commit".

The video you looked at and followed is for RT-AC66U. I don't think that the RT-AC56U will behave much differently overall (LEDs, etc.), but there might be a significant difference in the times required for the flash to complete. The upload completes, but then the router has to flash the firmware, and, in some cases, this might take unexpectedly long time. For example, my RT-N66U takes more than 20 min. to flash Shibby AIO builds, while RT-AC66U in the video takes less than 5 min. to complete the flash. Please note that this is dependent on the speed of the flash chip, not on the architecture.

Since the CFE is intact, you can try uploading the stock Asus firmware using the CFE's miniWeb GUI (if your CFE has it). Make sure you are connected with an Ethernet cable directly to one of the LAN ports of the router, that you have static IP set on your PC (e.g. 192.168.1.10, mask 255.255.255.0, gateway 192.168.1.1), no firewall, no antivirus and that there are no other network connections (e.g. wireless). Then go to 192.168.1.1 and if the miniWeb GUI appears, try uploading the stock firmware with it. If the upload is successful, start a ping /t 192.168.1.1 and do not touch the router until at least 5 min. after it starts responding to the pings - this is to give the firmware time to build all the NVRAM variables.

Also, please note that, on Asus routers, the 30-30-30 reset and NVRAM erase are performed using the WPS button, not the reset button.

Interesting, I'd never have imagined that flashing could take so long. I believe I gave it 10-15 minutes after it went LED-inactive before I restarted it.

I went ahead and tried connecting to 192.168.1.1, but the browser can't establish a connection. It seems like the router doesn't even initialize the eth ports. This is what it outputs when I'm connected to it with putty (but not in CFE prompt using ctrl-C):

It takes it about 1 minute to go from "Freeing init memory: 216K" to "Hit ENTER for console..."

I have the following commands in CFE though:

Code:

CFE> help
Available commands:
nvram NVRAM utility.
reboot Reboot.
flash Update a flash memory device
batch Load a batch file into memory and execute it
go Verify and boot OS image.
boot Load an executable file into memory and execute it
load Load an executable file into memory without executing it
save Save a region of memory to a remote file via TFTP
ping Ping a remote IP host.
arp Display or modify the ARP Table
ifconfig Configure the Ethernet interface
show clocks Show current values of the clocks.
show devices Display information about the installed devices.
help Obtain help for CFE commands
For more information about a command, enter 'help command-name'
*** command status = 0
CFE> help flash
SUMMARY
Update a flash memory device
USAGE
flash [options] filename [flashdevice]
Copies data from a source file name or device to a flash memory device.
The source device can be a disk file (FAT filesystem), a remote file
(TFTP) or a flash device. The destination device may be a flash or eeprom.
If the destination device is your boot flash (usually flash0), the flash
command will restart the firmware after the flash update is complete
OPTIONS
-noerase Don't erase flash before writing
-norescue Don't check anything
-offset=* Begin programming at this offset in the flash device
-size=* Size of source device when programming from flash to flash
-noheader Override header verification, flash binary without checking
-ndump dump nand flash
-block=* which block to dump
-forceflash Dangerous Command, Don't use if you don't know what you do
-erase Erase the partition, can set the offset and length
-cfe write to flash and stay at cfe command mode
-mem Use memory as source instead of a device
*** command status = 0
CFE>

Since you mentioned "eth initialization" - you are not trying to flash/connect to the router through WiFi, are you?
Although this might work in some cases (I was successful with an old Trendnet years ago), it is always recommended (and safer!) to connect directly to one of the LAN ports (with static IP set on your PC, no firewall, no antivirus and no other network connections, etc.) and then to try to flash or revive the router. BTW, I had to disable and the enable the Ethernet network adapter on my PC in order to make it work (no idea why it acted up, but ipconfig /release and /renew didn't work for some reason).

I don't know how long it takes Asus RT-AC56U to flash, but if you reboot it before the flash is completed you'll most likely end up with a bricked router, so waiting until it starts to respond to pings is worth in my opinion.

If direct connection to the router doesn't work - i.e. the Web interface doesn't come up and you cannot put it in restore mode, I guess that you can try flashing the original firmware on the router using the CFE. Please note that the instructions at that link are for Linksys routers and that there might be differences working with Asus routers.

I don't think that you can set an IP address on eth0 since it represents all LAN ports and the WAN port. And you don't have to - when you reset the router it will respond on 192.168.1.1 and this is the address which you can try to ping, etc.

My note above was to set a static IP configuration on your computer (I'm guessing that you are using a PC).

What happens when you set a static IP configuration on your PC, connect the PC to one of the LAN ports of the router, turn the router on and run ping /t 192.168.1.1?

I'm using a linux laptop connected to my router, but I did try the ping command on 192.168.1.1 and actually got 100% responsiveness.

Guess I'm gonna go back and try to CFE flash it after all then, cool.

EDIT:
I went ahead and tried connecting to 192.168.1.1 using my windows desktop and chrome instead, and got a grey page with the following text:

Settings have been updated. Web page will now refresh.
Changes have been made to the IP address or port number. You will now be disconnected from RT-AC56U.
To access the settings of RT-AC56U, reconnect to the wireless network and use the updated IP address and port number.

I think I got that page after the first time I tried flashing my router, perhaps it's just chrome-cache for 192.168.1.1?

As far as I can recall, there were issues using chrome to flash routers, so you might be experiencing one of them. Try using IE or Firefox instead and make sure that you have the firewall and antivirus disabled - just in case.

I too got a simliar behavior and feared for it to have failed (tomato-RT-AC56U-ARM--122-AIO-64K.trx). However I did flash it in Web-GUI with IE. It really takes long for the first boot, and only the Power LED works, however after ~15 minutes and after that several unplug/reboots (failed to get into the Restoration Mode as well) it booted up successfully into Tomato.

I have to say - the AC56U regular performance over 5G with an N900 Router over the same distance gives me a worse (!!!) signal then an Asus USB-N66 N900-Adapter (with 3 internal Antennas).

5.8GHZ Channel-Width set to 20mHz (due to the router being N900 standard)

I guess that "piece" is going back. However I'll wait until my AC66U receives and then test again if I get a better connection over the same route between them. Until then I'm highly unimpressed with it performing worse then an old USB-Wlan-Adapter ... one should never trust Routers with internal Antennas ... I really need to remember that.

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Bottomline of the story - It takes a while and at the moment (Build 122) no LEDs beside the Power-LED are working so take patience.